What is AWS Marketplace?

AWS Marketplace is an online store where you can sell or buy software that runs on
Amazon Web Services
(AWS). AWS Marketplace complements programs like Amazon DevPay and the Amazon Partner
Network. For
information about how AWS Marketplace differs from Amazon DevPay, see the AWS Marketplace Help and FAQ. For more information
about the Amazon Partner Network, see the AWS Partner
Network home page.

How Can I Use AWS Marketplace?

You use AWS Marketplace primarily as a subscriber (buyer), or as a seller.

Using AWS Marketplace as a Subscriber

AWS Marketplace is an online store where, as a subscriber, you can find, buy, and
quickly
deploy software that runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This software is available
in the form of
Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) contains all the information
necessary to boot an Amazon EC2 instance with your software. An EC2 instance is the
virtual
computing environment available from the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
web service.

An AMI is like a template of a computer's root volume. For example, an AMI might contain
the software to act as a web server (Linux, Apache, and your web site) or it might
contain
the software to act as a Hadoop node (Linux, Hadoop, and a custom application). You
can
launch one or more EC2 instances from an AMI.

To buy software through AWS Marketplace, you subscribe to the software by purchasing
a paid
AMI, and then launch the software as an EC2 instance.

For more information, see the following topics in the
Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances:

Using AWS Marketplace as a Seller

As a seller, you can build a custom AMI to sell on AWS Marketplace and manage the
sales
channel for products you sell. For information about becoming a seller on AWS Marketplace,
go to
the AWS Marketplace Management Portal. For
detailed information about selling your AMI, see Selling Your AMI in the
Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.

To manage the sales channel for products you sell on AWS Marketplace, you use the
AWS Marketplace Management Portal, where you can
access five different pages from the navigation bar links:

Marketing page

Use this page to view the results of your marketing efforts and to better
understand the traffic, conversion, customer usage, and revenue that your marketing
efforts generate.

Customer Support Eligibility page

Your support staff can use this page to access near-real-time information about a
customer's subscription to your products and provide fast, personalized
service.

Reports page

Use this page to download all your latest reports, including Weekly Ref Tag
Reports and other product subscription and usage reports.

Manage Products page

Use this page to share your AMI with AWS Marketplace and have your AMI scanned to
ensure it
meets the listing requirements. You can also view all your AMIs (whether shared or
unshared), and download data for your existing published products.

File Upload page

Use this page to upload files to AWS Marketplace, including product metadata, images,
and product documentation.

Controlling Access to AWS Marketplace

Your company might have specific people who should be allowed to use AWS Marketplace
or the
AWS Marketplace Management Portal on the company’s behalf. To use AWS Marketplace,
these people must be signed into AWS.
It's not a good idea to share the primary credentials of your AWS account in order
to give
them access, however, for these reasons:

Revoking shared credentials is difficult. For example, a person might change roles
and
responsibilities in your company and not be allowed to manage your subscriptions or
product information in the new role.

Anyone who has your primary credentials also has access to everything in your account,
including the billing information for your account.

A better approach is to use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to create users
and groups:

Create a user for each person in your company who needs to work with product
information or subscriptions. When you create users, each user has an individual user
name
and password that they use to sign in to AWS services, including AWS Marketplace and
the
AWS Marketplace Management Portal.

After you've created users, you can create groups in IAM and configure the groups
to
provide different levels of access to the AWS Marketplace Management Portal or to
your AWS Marketplace subscriptions.
For example, one group might have permission only to view your subscriptions; another
group might be able to subscribe and unsubscribe; and a third group might have complete
control, which includes starting and stopping instances.

Finally, after you've created the groups, you can assign each IAM user to one of the
groups, based on the level of access that user should have.

Additional Resources

For more information about how to work with AWS Marketplace and AWS Marketplace Management
Portal, including how AWS
manages billing for AWS Marketplace products, how to get support for products you
purchase on
AWS Marketplace, and where AWS Marketplace fits in with Amazon DevPay or the AWS Partner
Network, see the
AWS Marketplace Help and FAQ.